PTP EX: HIGH-RATE FRONT-END TELEMETRY AND COMMAND PROCESSING SYSTEM

Abstract

This paper describes the PTP EX, a 160 Mbps Telemetry and Command front-end system, which takes advantage of the state-of-the-art in networking and software technology, and the rapid development in PC components and FPGA design. Applications for the PTP EX include High-rate Remote Sensing Ground Stations, Satellite/Payload Integration and Testing, High-rate Bit Error Rate Test (BERT) System and High-rate Digital Recorder/Playback System. The PTP EX Interface Board, the MONARCH-EX PCI High Speed Frame Synchronizer/Telemetry Simulator with Reed-Solomon Encoder/Decoder, is designed with the following key capabilities: · 160 Mbps serial input for CCSDS Frame Processing (Frame Synchronization, Derandomization, CRC, Reed-Solomon decoding, time stamping, quality annotation, filtering, routing, and stripping); · 160 Mbps disk logging of Reed-Solomon corrected CCSDS frames with simultaneous real-time processing of spacecraft engineering data and ancillary payload data; · Onboard CCSDS Telemetry Simulation with 160 Mbps serial output (Sync Pattern, background pattern, ID counter, time stamp, CRC, Reed-Solomon encoding, Randomization, and Convolutional encoding); · Bit Error Rate Testing up to 160 Mbps (Pseudo-random transmitter and receiver with bit error counter). The innovative architecture of the MONARCH-EX allows for simultaneous logging of a high-rate data stream and real-time telemetry processing. The MONARCH-EX is also designed with the latest in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. FPGAs allow the board to be reprogrammed quickly and easily to perform different functions. Thus, the same hardware can be used for both Telemetry processing and simulation, and BERT applications. The PTP EX also takes advantage of the latest advances in off-the-shelf PC computing and technology, including Windows NT, Pentium II, PCI, Gigabit Ethernet, and RAID subsystems. Avtec Systems, Inc. is leveraging the PTP EX to take advantage of the continuous improvement in high-end PC server components.